ABSTRACT
This chapter deliberates why and how Bhaskar’s concept of absence and dialectical processes of negation can be given greater consideration in the conceptualization of environmental learning and action. The chapter argues that normalized processes of environmental learning can be expanded through engaging not only with real negation and transformative negation (at 1M and 2E), but also with radical (totalizing) negation (at 3L) and linear negation (at 4D) involving self-transformation and transformative praxis conceptualized as learning processes in possible zones of proximal development. The chapter suggests that significant to conceptualization of environmental education as a transformative praxis is the critical realist proposition that the axiology of freedom involves absence and absenting. The chapter probes this educationally, in a rapidly emerging educational arena where change and transformation of society towards a more sustainable, just existence is of central interest.
